Sorry about the 'over'. There is something wrong with my 'c' key (it took three attempts to type it just then). As for 'godawful', it is a perfectly acceptable word (as is its hyphenated variant) according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

As for your actual point, I simply meant that the cover reminds me of the kind of cheap, sensational pulp one picks up in airports. Compared to the recent and wonderful redesign of Gravity's Rainbow (http://a3.vox.com/6a00bf76d0a9b7438300d41445d8c33c7f-500pi) this cover just looks pedestrian.

I think we're going to find this cover absolutely suits the interior--if Pynchon has, as reported, written a neo-noir "detective novel" (and likely in the same sense as M&D being a "historical novel"), then this cover art/design is appropriate and evocative. The only further step would be a Hard Case Crime kind of painting (which might take the joke too far).